Globalization of a different sort: two rural dioceses, Kenyan and Minnesotan, minister to each other - Ministries - Harvest for Hope

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 18, 2002 by Patricia Lefevere

The journey from St. Cloud, Minn., to Homa Bay, Kenya, takes a minimum of 20 hours under the best conditions. Once inside the country, Kenya offers few attractions -- other than its safari parks -- for travelers.

The nine-hour ride from Nairobi, Kenya's capital, to Homa Bay -- a new diocese on the western shores of Lake Victoria -- bumps along some of Africa's roughest roads. Despite the jarring ride, a group of St. Cloud-area Catholics has made the journey twice in two years, and another group will depart in February.

In between, a number of Kenyan Catholics, indigenous to the Homa Bay diocese, have visited St. Cloud, staying with farm families and with local Catholics in small towns in central Minnesota. Other Kenyan Catholics plan a second visit in 2003.

Together the two groups are partnering each other in what Catholic Relief Services calls its Harvest for Hope program. The program links rural U.S. dioceses with those in other countries so they can share resources, ideas and friendships to the mutual benefit of both. Similar relations are underway between the Trenton, N.J., diocese and Catholics in Uganda, and between the Madison, Wis., diocese and a group of Ghana Catholics.

Emily Maeckelbergh was only 20 when she journeyed to Kenya last year. She has not stopped talking about it since, she told NCR. A junior at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., Maeckelbergh said she brings her Africa experience to all of her classes.

She enjoys telling about the vibrancy of Kenyan liturgical worship, the sight of sugar cane becoming brown sugar or women weaving baskets and selling them in local markets. Her stories have religious, economic, feminist and cultural contexts. She is preparing to become a secondary school teacher and said she will continue to inform students wherever she goes about the problems and the promise of Africa.

Maeckelbergh keeps in touch through letters with an African mother and her children with whom she developed "a special bond" during the two weeks she spent in Kenya. When the delegation from Homa Bay visited St. Cloud in August, Maeckelbergh received more letters and prepared news and gifts to send back with the Kenyans.

Similar exchanges have begun between Ron Pagnucco, director of peace studies at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn. -- one of Maeckelbergh's teachers -- and Peter Kimeu, who helps coordinate the Harvest for Hope partnership from Kenya. Pagnucco and Kimeu are collaborating to develop an African Learning Community that would take place in Kenya and would include three-week-internships and longer stays for St. John's and St. Benedict's students.

Pagnucco called the endeavor "one of the positive sides of Ex Corde Ecclesiae," the 1990 papal document that called for a strengthening of Catholic identity in Catholic higher education. Currently three young Kenyan religious are studying at St. Benedict's, and Kimeu's son is enrolled at St. John's. The St. Cloud diocese is looking at longer-term links between the two sees.

Planting the seeds

Although the relationship between the Minnesota and the Kenyan diocese began in 1999, St. Cloud Bishop John Kinney planted the seeds years before. As bishop of Bismarck, N.D., Kinney set up a commission, whose members traveled to East Africa in the early 1990s to establish Bismarck's own missionary program in Kenya.

When Kinney became bishop of St. Cloud in 1995, he continued his interest in and support of mission links. "Bishop Kinney believes that mission is an integral part of every local church," said Fr. Bill Vos, director of St. Cloud's Mission Office. "Contemporary missiology demanded we look at our relationship with the world church," Vos told NCR.

Vos and Kinney studied ways in which "twinning" could occur on the parish and the organizational level between St. Cloud Catholics and those in Africa.

Vos' interest in Africa may have preceded that of the bishop. A longtime friend of Mill Hill Fr. John Kaiser of Perham, Minn., Vos worked 19 years in Tanzania and Kenya. "John Kaiser was the single most important person in my decision to work in East Africa," Vos said, adding that he visited Kaiser several times before seeking release from the St. Cloud diocese to work as a Maryknoll mission associate.

Kaiser died of gunshot wounds to his head on Aug. 24, 2000, a death many believe was a political assassination aimed at silencing the priest who was a strong critic of the Kenyan government's abusive human rights record. The violence of Kaiser's death has meant that nearly every Minnesotan knows where Kenya is and is acquainted with stories of its crime, government graft, famine, poverty and disease.

But thousands also know about the spirituality of African people, their vibrant styles of worship, devotion to family and village life, their hospitality and hard work in the face of hardship. Those returning have enthusiastically shared their stories, Vos said. "This is a ministry to St. Cloud as well as to Africa. Both sides are sending and receiving."